Buff Bagwell Thought He’d Never Walk Again After WCW Thunder Injury

Buff Bagwell relived one of the most traumatic moments of his career—a brutal neck injury on WCW Thunder that left him temporarily paralyzed in the middle of the ring.

Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Bagwell opened up about the botched bulldog spot that nearly ended his career and changed his life forever.

“Bulldog happens and he misses me… I’m trying to catch up to him. So when I try to catch up to him, to make the move look good, we collide. I collide into his back, and my head goes that way, and it snaps that way.”

That collision left Bagwell motionless on the mat, unsure if he’d ever walk again. When a wrestler tried to roll him over, Bagwell gave him the grim reality.

“He goes to turn me over, but when he spins me… and our eyes meet, I go, ‘I’m paralyzed.’ And at that junction, there’s no cheat sheet or anything on what to do.”

What happened next was chaos. Bagwell remembers seeing Lex Luger and Rick Steiner visibly emotional as they tried to process what just happened.

“I remember telling Lex, ‘Don’t cry, brother.’ I remember telling Rick, ‘That’s okay, don’t cry.’”

While lying on the mat unable to move, Bagwell says he made peace with the idea that he might never regain function—and began imagining a new purpose for his life.

“I said, ‘You know, guys, here’s a guy that’s fully paralyzed… I can go to schools just like Christopher Reeves does, and I can talk to schools.’”

But right after those words left his mouth, hope returned.

“The moment I said that, Danny Young, our trainer, goes, ‘Your left hand is moving.’”

Bagwell described the sensation of feeling returning to his body as warm, like hot water pouring down his limbs. He later learned the exact damage he had suffered.

“You bruised your spinal cord… when you broke your neck at three, four cervical disc three hit your cord, but it didn’t sever it. It bruised.”

Thanks to that bruising—not severing—he eventually regained movement once the swelling went down. But Bagwell credits more than just medical luck.

“I believe God gave me my body back. That’s what I believe all my heart.”

The moment nearly ended everything. Instead, it became the moment Buff Bagwell says changed everything—and showed him just how powerful resilience can be.

Do you remember watching this incident on WCW Thunder? What do you think Bagwell’s legacy should be after surviving that kind of trauma in the ring? Drop your comments and share your thoughts.